The Mark of Cain

by Lindsey Barraclough

  I find the path through the marsh by the light of the flickering corpse candles that Zillah told me were the souls of the unbaptized flitting between heaven and hell.

  When the grey watery dawn rises over the reeds, I am long on the road from Hilsey to the sea.

  And at last I come to Bryers Guerdon.

  I seek charity at the house of the priest, Piers Hillyard. His vixen of a housekeeper will not allow me even one night’s sleep in a corner of the barn, but Hillyard comes after me with some cheese and small beer, then sends me down to the marshes to seek shelter.

  A track leads down the hill from the priest’s house to his little church of All Hallows, set back in its protecting circle of trees. Priests are always good for scraps to eat, but I avoid their churches, for I cannot bear the touch of consecrated ground beneath my feet.

  From the shelter of the tall hedgerow on the other side of the track, I pass All Hallows, my eyes firmly ahead.

  But all at once my steps falter; my head spins. I feel a flush of sweat sweep over my body.

  Swaying, I turn and look about for a place to sit, but all is wet grass, straggly bushes, and thick mud. If I passed into the churchyard I might find refuge among the tombstones, or in the church itself, but nothing would induce me to walk that way.

  The hedgerow wants its new leaves. Through the fretwork of black twigs I see, beyond the eastern wall of the church, farther than the last straggling headstones, a stretch of swampy ground and a pool overhung by an ugly, crooked tree.

  The lychgate draws my gaze. As I run my eye over the wooden gates standing a little way open and the bowed, overhanging roof above, dripping in the endless rain, I realize that it is not the fever that has overwhelmed me but the gate itself. It is as if I have strayed into the shaded borders of the otherworld, the spirit-world beyond our own. Here in this place of enchantment, the thin curtain between the worlds shifts and changes, conceals and uncovers without mortal aid.

  A tingling runs through my body.

  This is a place of ancient magic, on the margin of earth and water, sacred to the men of stone, bronze, and iron, long before time and memory.

  I fear some terrible mischance here, think I smell smoke on the air. My burned wound aches. Confused and weakened, I trudge on but cannot resist looking back again and again.

  The marsh-dwellers, in their huts of willow, mud, and reeds, have little to share and are wary of strangers. They look into my eyes and turn from me, threaten me with sticks, tell me to be gone.

  I move farther away from the dwellings of the sheep and cattle herders, where scrawny, wet ewes plod away from me and thin lambs skitter sideways out of my path. I tear up clumps of grass, rip up handfuls of drooping marsh flowers to grind with my teeth for sustenance, stumbling on through the high reeds alongside the channels of fresh water towards the wide open sea-mouth of the far river. From time to time I kneel and try to drink out of my cupped hands, but the water is becoming brackish; I am drawing ever closer to the salt creeks.

  Forcing up my head, I see through a bleary haze a solitary withered tree. Almost hidden beneath it, among a tangle of scrubby bushes, is a small hut with earth walls and a roof of knotted reeds. I stagger towards it.

  The crude door, of thin boughs bound together with twine, scrapes inwards against a heap of straw. The space within is damp and foul smelling. Deep shadows linger in the corners. A rough wooden bench, no more than a plank of wood resting on two gnarled tree stumps, runs along the wall under a small square opening of window, half covered with a mat of plaited grass, through which sprays of drizzle blow in. Hanging from hooks lashed to the rafters are carcasses of hare, rabbit, and weasel, dried fur clinging to bone, with all flesh and blood sucked, scratched, and picked out. A dun-coloured ragged garment hangs on the back wall, on a piece of branch thrust into the wattle.

  I sink down into the dirty straw and know nothing more for a long while, drifting in and out of the world, sometimes half opening my eyes and seeing the shimmer of stars against the black shape of night above the bench. In one strange dream, I think an angel comes to me where I lie. I feel his breath, see close to me the golden strands of his hair, but when the dawn inches its way across the walls of the shelter and I awake to the harsh croak of a crow on the roof above me, I am alone.

  Another night, perhaps another day, passes by outside the dirt walls. The angel leans over me and I swallow water from a thick clay bowl that tastes of earth.

  On the third night he bends over me once more and drips cool water between my parched lips. I open my eyes. The moon’s yellow face fills the square of window and I look upon the angel at last.

  I am not afraid, though angel he is none. The diseased and disfigured came to the house in the woods for solace and healing. I watched them from my loft. They did not repel me, and neither does he. This hideous, deformed creature has given me water — life. The well-favoured shunned and despised me, refused me shelter, but this brutish thing, more beast than man, yet man he is, affords me the refuge of his dwelling place, and I draw close to him, though his strange face and long arms bear the dreaded marks of the leper.

  His speech is little more than rough sounds in his throat; perhaps he has never needed to utter a word to another human soul for a long time. He barks out his name to me — “Cain! Cain! Lan-kin! Lan-kin!” and repeats mine —“Aff-ra! Aff-ra! Aff-ra!”

  Days pass, and clumsy words come to him, never clear, but I begin to catch some meaning in them. He shares his kill — raw coney, rat, goose, and crow, ripping them apart for me with his sharp teeth. When I am well again, I will make a fire to cook, but for now I need to grow strong, and have eaten bloody meat before.

  When the rain eases, and my illness passes a little, Lankin carries me out into the wilderness of sea-channel and freshwater spring, of reed mace and tussock grass.

  And I see that though the long man lives in a world of which the margins are water, he will not cross it, whether it moves or is still. He will not even pass over a place if he senses water running below the ground. He drinks hesitantly from one small spring only, bubbling out a short way from the hut, and if we draw near to a pool or stray too close to a ditch, the creature flinches and turns away.

  When I ask, Lankin twists his face, trying to form words to tell his story, using dumb show when the words fail him. Water seems to mean for him a blinding tangle of choking weed and filthy, frothing green bubbles; young men laughing as they whip and thrash a misshapen, ugly boy back into the creek with springing willow wands, again and again. Water is lungs bursting on the edge of drowning, and the weakness that follows, for days and days.

  He roams his own hidden paths and tracks, creeping round the pools and channels, skirting unseen the dwellings of those who make their rude living on the marshlands, but in the end he always comes to the water. He can never escape this place.

  Months pass in his company; then, like the shiver of a cobweb in a lift of air, I feel the first tremor of flesh and spirit being crafted in the dark, secret heart of me. And for this small bud I long to be the willing, tender arms, sweet scent¸ and soothing words I never knew myself.

  Together Lankin and I gather little clouds of sheep wool from thorny boughs or hedges, to comb and spin into the softest blankets. We weave a cradle from green willow wands and silky grass, and cushion it with goose down and velvety moss.

  In the dead of the night, under a bloody rustred moon, I give birth after long, tortured hours (Do not cry out, Aphra). It is a thin, ill-made creature that mews once, then gives up its life, not a thing that could ever have lived and grown, or found a place to exist in the world.

  And in the same hour that it comes, so Lankin disappears with it, and I lie seething with burning cheeks and feverish dreams, untended and sick, for how long I do not know.

  Then a young girl, I believe following a stray sheep deep into the marshes, pushes open the door of the hut. She runs to fetch her mother, a goodwife who knows all too well the signs of a recent birth but who do
es not ask me where the babe has gone. She says that good will come of this for me, for Lady Ygurne Guerdon, the wife of the lord of the manor, is languishing after the delivery of her own infant son, John, and they are in need of a wet nurse to feed the baby.

  “The master believes his lady has been charmed by the midwife, so listless and out of sorts she is,” says the woman, “like many a poor wretched wife in childbirth before her. Witches, the lot of them, midwives are, knowing all them witchery things.”

  So the goodwife brings me a draught, brings me clean garments, and restores me a little, then takes me, feeble and weary, to the great house of Guerdon Hall.

  I stand, swaying, before Sir Edmund Guerdon, a man aware of the gleam of every gilded curl on his head and the lay of every hair of his carefully shaped beard. Even in my weakness, I see he is a man who likes to run his eyes over every maidservant who passes through his door while, I learn later, his slender, moon-white lady, Ygurne, keeps to her rooms above. He speaks as if we two are alone together in the chamber, though the woman who brought me is there.

  “By all that’s good,” he breathes close to me, “your eyes are as deep and dark as the Styx. I wonder what dreams my heir will drink in from you.”

  He tosses a few coins to the goodwife, who scrabbles around on the floor, making sure she has recovered every last one from the corners.

  “Go tell them in the kitchen to send up the laundry girl, Kittie Wicken,” he tells her.

  His eyes remain on me while the woman leaves. The only sound is of our breathing — until a moment later, when there comes a soft rap at the door.

  A young girl enters, fair head uncovered, eyes lowered to the floor. Her hands tremble; her shoulders hunch forward. She is all submission and fear.

  He moves towards her, raises his hand. She flinches for a second. He runs his fingers from the top of her head downwards till they reach the twisted tip of her long plaited hair. She does not lift her eyes.

  “Kittie, this is our wet nurse, Aphra Rushes. Take her below, would you, and feed her up well on good vittles. Maybe now our little man will cease his grizzling.”

  Without a word Kittie leads me down a winding stone staircase into a large kitchen, where smoke, steam, and smells from the fireplace rise up among the chains and hooks hanging in the huge chimney. A writhing child frets in a wooden cradle set to one side of the fire. Kittie lifts him out, rocks him a little, then places him in my arms. He smells the milk and squirms and struggles, pushing his small fist into his mouth. I look at his red puling face and see his father.

  The sound of coarse laughter echoes around the stone stairs.

  Two men push through the door, their faces creased with mirth.

  “How he got the net off himself in the end I shall never know,” laughs the first.

  “Ha!” cries the second. “How many tides was he in the water this time — was it two? Where is Old Clowder, Kittie? Long Lankin the leper man has got himself away over the marsh. We need a draught of ale from the cask.”

  “And his terror every time it rose up around his neck, Walter,” says the first man, grinning. “The monster thought he was going to drown. Then, when the master ordered the slops to be thrown over him, that was the best sport I ever saw. And what was that bit of meat he carried? A coney skinned ready to be eaten?”

  “The master let his dogs make quick work of it, that’s for sure. How the leper blubbered over it. Ha, ha!”

  I think I will faint into the fire, my heart is so sick.

  “Ha! He won’t come crawling back this way again soon. Kittie, will that child never be quiet? Go fetch Old Clowder for the ale. Ezra must be sure to burn the net, and not to touch it with his naked hands.”

  When they have departed in their merriment, Kittie sees that the men have left me in some torment of mind. She brings me good ale from the cask and some soft bread, sits quietly beside me, and asks about my lost babe, that I have milk to feed this one. In my misery, and because of her gentleness, I tell her it was Lankin’s infant, his and mine, that the master’s dogs devoured.

  Then I regretted I did not keep my own counsel, for I could see Kittie was overcome with revulsion, though she tried to conceal it afterward.

  Late that night, I am alone, utterly derelict, unwell, suckling the wretched babe in the low chair by the embers. I catch a movement, the glint of golden thread and seed pearls on dark velvet, the gleam of finely tooled leather. I look up to find Sir Edmund watching from the doorway.

  I might turn a corner and he will be there, descend a bend of the stairs and he will press in too close as he passes. He has found out where I am lodged, in a small stone-walled room next to the arched vault where the ale barrels are stored, just along the passage from the great kitchen. Sometimes he will catch me when I am utterly alone with no chance of avoiding him. His touch is loathsome, and my protests scorned. The servants are afeared of him and have little concern for me.

  He has no inkling of how much I have grown to hate him, and how I also despise the insipid wife I barely see, for she lies on her silken couch from morn till evening. I feel nothing but spite for his peevish, fretful child, who bawls hour after hour, arching his back and clawing at the air.

  Little does Guerdon know what manner of woman he keeps in his hall, suffering his attentions until my strength returns, while my heart aches for the long man on the marshes, and the poor dead thing we made together.

  It is the solstice. The child will take no nourishment, but bites at me with his sharp little teeth and draws blood and will not let himself be comforted. I put him roughly down in his cradle and leave him with Kittie Wicken, who every day weeps in corners and wrings her chapped hands in her apron. The cook tells me the pot boy has got Kittie with child, the pot boy blames the groom of the stable, but they all know that the father is Sir Edmund. Timid Kittie is not bound or betrothed to any man and always keeps to the house.

  As for me, I cannot shake away the sickness in my heart, and cannot summon up the strength or will to cast spell or charm.

  Despite this, I can see Kittie is nervous when I am about. I might be weak yet, but am still able to torment, with a thousand little barbs, the ill-natured child I have to feed. Kittie saw me give him a draught on a spoon to make him vomit so I would not have to bring him to church on the Sabbath. She watched from a corner when I pricked him on his fingers with a bodkin so he would be testy and ill-tempered when his high-born grandmother came to bless him.

  Kittie will do whatever I ask of her. I pay her little heed, for she is sorely afeared of me: I told her I knew magic that would let me creep inside her head, look out from her eyes, make her hands do my bidding.

  I climb the stone stairs and go up into the evening light of the garden to find white poppies to prepare a draught to quieten the babe. It is not for his good — I care not if he is in pain — but for mine, for his endless shrieking provokes me. I can hear him even outside, his cries loud over Kittie’s coaxing for him to chew on an apple core with his swollen gums, or her gentle singing while she tries to rock him to sleep.

  The tide is out in the creek. I wander along the bank in the last of the sunshine, searching for the flowers, and come upon a low, gnarled tree garlanded with dark-red roses. I close my eyes to draw in their fragrance, when I am surprised by a sound close by. I know it, and feel a moment’s rush of joy.

  “Aff-ra! Aff-ra!”

  I turn to see Cain Lankin, looking up at me out of the dry channel. He is in a piteous condition, his face a mass of sores and lumps, his nose collapsed. He reaches out his arms to me.

  “Soon, soon, my dear, and I will be able to help you,” I soothe him. “Just a little longer and we will be free — you and I together —”

  I feel eyes upon us, look swiftly back at the house, and see a face at an upstairs window. The casement opens. Sir Edmund furiously shakes his fist.

  “Get away from here!” he cries. “Leave my servant be! I’ve told you before — get away from my land, you filthy, diseased,
worm-eaten monster!”

  His face disappears. In a flurry of commotion from the house, the door across the cobbled yard bursts open. A number of servants, Francis Parkin, Old Clowder, Thomas, and Walter, thunder across the grass, brandishing an assortment of implements — billhook, axe, and spear.

  Sir Edmund follows, bellowing, “I’ll drown you alive! I would have done it before if you wasn’t such a pole of a man, and stuck up out of the wretched water!”

  Walter and Thomas grab my arms and begin to pull me away, thinking Lankin had intended to attack me, but Lankin mistakes their intent.

  He raises himself to his full height, which is considerable, and lifts his arms. Curling his claw-like hands into two fists, he turns to Sir Edmund and shrieks, “Kill you! Kill you!”

  It tears at my soul to hear him.

  “Threaten me, would you!” Sir Edmund reaches down for a rock and hurls it at Lankin. It glances across his shoulder, ripping out a piece of flesh. I feel the jag of pain as if it were my own. Howling, spitting out a thread of bubbles, he begins to retreat across the hard mud at the bottom of the channel.

  He stands up again on the far bank, calling, “Kill you! Kill you!” once more.

  “Don’t you dare creep up on my servants, you monstrous hedgepig!”

  Francis Parkin, Old Clowder, and Sir Edmund continue to rain stones and abuse on the helpless leper until he disappears among the scrubby bushes and thin trees beyond the creek.

  “I’ve told you before — I’ll kill you, you foul and pestilent base-born cur!” shouts Sir Edmund after Lankin. “I’ll send my men out to find you and cut you down — be sure I will!”

  Thomas and Walter usher me back towards the house.

  I do not sleep, but pace the floor in the night kitchen as the great fire cools to grey ash. I could steal away, noiseless as a wraith, and return to the hut on the marsh, but here in this house I am slowly spinning out a thread of hope for the long man, with Guerdon’s wretched child its vital filament — an ancient spell that could cure Lankin’s disease, requiring him to drink of the blood of an innocent, spilled by a silver dagger and caught in a silver bowl.